UNIX for Advanced & Expert Users

The third-party ERP system used by our company has no idle-out facility and we sometimes have issues because users simply walk away from their computers and leave sessions logged in for hours or even go home without logging out. (We are in a factory environment so it is hard to raise the care factor very high in the users - once the siren goes for clock-off they're out of there!) Too many sessions and we run out of licences, and worse there are overnight processes that can cause data corruption if there are any logged in sessions. Currently I have a crude method of killing any sessions before the overnight processes start but sometimes even that can cause data corruption.

The solution is so tantalisingly close and yet, I suspect, so far. Every screen and every menu is backed out of by simply pressing a Function key which sends the string "end" and a carriage return to whatever field is awaiting input. I could have a continuously running script that uses a "finger" command or something similar to detect sessions that have been idle for say an hour. Then if I could just keep sending the "end" string to that process until it eventually logged out my problem would be solved.

I have tried coming at this from a few different angles but keep hitting dead ends. Does anybody have any suggestions for how I can send keystrokes to an existing process and have it react to them? Can a process take input from two sources (i.e. from the keyboard and from my script)?

Thanks

Wayne

SCO_SV notmyrealhostname 5 6.0.0 i386

It matters what the interface for the user is.
If it is console, root can write to what the process sees as /dev/tty, the controlling terminal. If it is an ncurses app the same is likely true.

If it is x (windows-like) you have to send key_events to the window. Which is harder because it involves C code.

I'm vague because you need to supply a lot more information.
1. are they ssh sessions, pty's, X? Precisely what connect. be detailed.
2. are they distributed sessions on local servers?
3. can you currently trace a pid on unix back to a user terminal, whatever that is?

I'm not SCO, but some folks here are. However a lot of terminal stuff is common throughout UNIXes. So can probably help in some instances.

In addition to what Jim asked, what is the client side environment?
Are you running out of SCO user licenses, or application software licenses?
Does killing a process always result in the loss of an application software license? is there a way to force a recount of in use licenses?

---------- Post updated at 01:30 PM ---------- Previous update was at 09:02 AM ----------

You might be able to accomplish this by using expect.

Please show us your process for killing database clients.
If anywhere in your process a unix "kill -9" appears, the process needs urgent change.

If you know, please post the brand name of the Database Engine used by your ERP system.

We need to know if this is a client-server system or something simple like telnet access. If it is telnet access then something like a "kill -15" to the telnet session is usually sufficient to cause a "hangup" state which disconnects the session tidily (as if the user had powered down their terminal).

Thanks for the responses everybody. I'll try and answer all the questions from each of you here:

chrislon ttyp1 Jan 25 06:00

and a finger command returns this:

chrislon Chris Longbottom *p1 Wed Jan 25 06:00 w00215.notmyrealcompany.com

kill `ps -o pid= -u "\`echo \\\`who | egrep -v "root|dharma|wayne" | cut -d' ' -f1 | sort -u\\\`\`"` `lsof 2>/dev/null | fgrep "sqlnw->" | awk '{print $2}'` 2>/dev/null
sleep 5
kill -9 `ps -o pid= -u "\`echo \\\`who | egrep -v "root|dharma|wayne" | cut -d' ' -f1 | sort -u\\\`\`"` `lsof 2>/dev/null | fgrep "sqlnw->" | awk '{print $2}'` 2>/dev/null
sleep 5

I hope this covers all you need to know.

Thanks

Wayne

Appgen is not a typical terminal emulation product. What does the user .profile look like.
I used to use a similar approach to killing sessions, but ended up changing to using "/etc/fuser" instead. Assuming all the data files are in one directory,

Code:

/etc/fuser  /u/data/*  2>files_checked 1>pid_numbers

"pid_numbers" contains a list of processes using files in the /u/data directory.

Hi jgt,

I have used fuser before and I guess I hadn't thought to use this method to get a "cleaner" list of processes specifically using the ERP system. Unfortunately the data files are not all in one directory although they are broken into module subfolders only one level deeper so it's probably still doable. Ultimately though I'm trying to get away from killing altogether.

The .profile is shown below.

Thanks

Wayne

----------

AGINIT="FORMSPOOLER='lp -dlp'SPOOLER='lp -ddadmdot'AGDATE='I'";export AGINIT
AGPWD=/etc
AGHOME=/u/timms
AGAUTOR=ON
AQLHELP=/u/timms/AQLHELP
PDEFPTH=/u/timms
SSPATH=/u/timms/SS
export AGPWD AGHOME AQLHELP PDEFPTH SSPATH AGAUTOR
PATH=:.:/bin/sh:$AGHOME/bin:/usr/chrislon:$PATH;export PATH
cd $AGHOME
trap '' 2 3
clear
TERM=vt220;export TERM
AGCLIENT=Y;export AGCLIENT
run sm
trap '' 2 3
exit